


That Ditch Out In The Valley

by FishLeather



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Android Sherlock Holmes, Angst, Army Engineer John Watson, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, South America, brief mention of injury, humanity is a bit not good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishLeather/pseuds/FishLeather
Summary: "Thirty-four years old. There was no chance in Hell that an android had survived with version-one-point-zed joints for thirty-four years. There was just no way this one had worked long enough to wear down gaps into the plastic, and actually get something caught in the servo layer. And it wasn't even paper or a few bits of hair or something, it was a big bloody layer of bunched-up wool."Sherlock picks a fight with the belstaff, loses quite badly.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

A slow day at the AGRO office was something John Watson used to treasure. He still fiercely protects his days off, but he's come to dread the sight of just a single request on his appointment list. It wasn't a good omen.

Getting a self-diagnostic repair request wasn't unusual, independently sustainable androids were known to break down more and more frequently with age. No, the unusual bit was that according to the information left in the log file, the android should have been decommissioned decades ago, because it would have started falling apart long before the age of--

"Thirty-four would not be considered particularly old in human terms," the android provided as a greeting, sweeping through the lab room's open door in a winter coat that concealed any useful information on joint or limb structure. Obviously other experts had already expressed doubt about the android's ridiculous age. The heavy clothing ruled out overheating as an issue, and walking didn't produce any 'bad' sounds, like grinding, creaking, or, in one bizarre case, hissing.

John stood up from his desk, gesturing towards what was sometimes awkwardly referred to as the 'patient side' of the room. "You can fold that coat up and put it somewhere, and I'll--"

The interruption was immediate. "No, I really can't." The android had turned to face John from near the repair bench. "There were eight coat hooks in the hallway, I would have used one of those, if possible. Obviously I can't get it off."

The hooks were for employees, but John decided not to mention that. "Well, I'd like to see you try to remove the coat, in front of me. If all else fails, I'll use the scissors, alright?" He retrieved a notepad and pen from a drawer, and watched.

With what almost seemed like resignation, the android faced John and started undoing the bottom few buttons. Working upward, the elbows locked at the third from the top, but rotation of the forearm allowed the last few to be opened, the top just barely reached by fingertips. It seemed to be a simple motor seizing issue, until the android tried to slide the coat off. Brought on by just the smallest shrug of shoulder movement, there was a loud grinding sound, and somehow, the outside of the jacket... crumpled a bit, just around where the sleeves attached. The noise stopped when the shoulders returned to neutral position, but the jacket remained on.

Thirty-four years old. There was no chance in Hell that an android had survived with version-one-point-zed joints for thirty four-years. There was just no way this one had worked long enough to wear down gaps into the plastic, and actually get something caught in the servo layer. And it wasn't even paper or a few bits of hair or something, it was a big bloody layer of bunched-up wool. It just wasn't possible. On the other hand, it matched the log data, and very little else could explain this issue.

"Process of elimination," remarked the android. "You're familiar with the structure of original-series parts." After a short pause, the android said something that made very little sense. "I would prefer to keep the coat intact, if at all possible. It's hard to find ones that fit this well."

"Well enough to wreck your joints?" John offered.

The expression of fear was blink-and-you'd-miss-it brief, replaced by one of haughty annoyance, but it had been deeply unnerving all the same. "Don't know why I bother coming here, when half the so-called engineers couldn't fix an arse with a crack in it. It's a simple wad of material stuck in a mechanism, but of course such things are beyond modern science. You'd all rather throw something away than fix it. Wasteful." The word was spat out with an obvious second meaning of 'cruel.'

It was obvious that the android would have preferred to continue self-driven maintenance, and was only here because this time, the jamb was lodged in the very joints required to lift one's hands to that height. John wanted to say something... kind, but claiming to be different from the rest of humanity would be egotistical in the extreme. "You're right," he said instead. The android seemed caught off guard, but made no motion to interrupt. John turned around to rummage for one of the older tools. "It's not that the damage is unfixable, most of the time. It's... planned obsolescence, but you knew that." Having retrieved a rounded wooden dowel similar in size to a pencil, something that could move the wool aside instead of just piercing it further into the mechanism, John turned back around.

The android was looking at him with an intensity that made John feel like he was under a microscope.

"Bolivia, or Argentina?"

John could remember the strange feeling of being a front-lines engineer during his deployment in Chile. It had only been a few years ago, but those years were during the fifth generation of AI. Apoptosis. Suicide. Martyrdom. Senselessness, is what he saw it as. The first four types of mechanical infantry had been about staying power, but the fifth was cheap and dangerous like a molotov cocktail. Or like a suicide bomber who didn't know any better. His superiors eventually noticed something was off about John, the way he eyed the triage hacksaw like it was out to get him, but as one of the few warm bodies in boots, it wasn't like they could take him behind the shed and break him down for parts, so he was sent home salt-stained and having nearly gone mad, while the struggle for lithium raged on without him.

Sometimes the nightmares were the only thing keeping him alive. Dreams where he hears someone screaming from inside a burning shack, and he calmly walks inside, methodically searches the premises while his skin blisters and peels away, feels no urgency to save himself, nor really to save anyone. In that world, he is given tasks, and strives to complete them, or die trying.

It was impossible to consider offing himself when his own self-preservation felt priceless.

But all of that noise and pain and confusion was rattling around in the back of his brain like so much fragmented data slowing down the seeking of a disk, so instead of an answer he instinctively went with: "What?"

"You served in the Lithium Triangle recently, either as some useless diplomat with only passable Spanish fluency or more likely as part of the standing army maintenance core. Educated before deployment, can't have worked your way up from scrapping decommissioned infantry as you still have all of your original fingers unlike the vast majority of those who worked a bandsaw for a period of years, especially when the most commonly produced model have the surface off-center and optimized for a right handed approach. So you were obviously higher up. However, given the time of year and that your hair is still visibly damaged from the salt despite being so short, you must have recently been decom--" the android pauses, blinks. "Invalided. You must have been recently invalided, either due to high risk of developing reactive psychosis or from being irreparably injured."

A minor detail here and there had been wrong, but overall the analys rang true. Almost more incredible, however, had been… the massive error near the end. The android had nearly said John was _decommissioned_ , like a piece of equipment, or an artificial soldier. Like a sham of a person, despite having a beating heart. It hurt, yes, but it got to the core of what had been bothering John since he left Chile: something was missing.

Having stared too long, John finally found his words and said “That... was amazing.” 

A bit of poking around with the dowel was enough to release both sides of the coat from the android's frame.

With the coat removed, a set of heavily worn-in shoulder joints were on full display. Nothing like the latest civilian models, which were covered with faintly-hexagon-patterned psudoskin, here the joint was simply... open. It looked like someone used a diagram for a 21st-century joint replacement surgery as a set of literal blueprints-- but hadn't had any flesh to hide the ball-and-socket prosthetic. Instead, the pale plastic torso and arm casings stopped a fair distance from the joint, exposing most of it to the elements. From just behind the torso chassis' edge, a mess of moving parts could be seen minutely shifting to account for balance.

The design made no sense. 

It didn't even exactly match the rudimentary first generation joints John had studied in technical school, those had been fitted with interlocking protective segments that limited range of movement similar to that of an action figure. He'd thought the edges of the plates had been worn down to create a gap, but instead they were completely missing, leaving the entire area exposed. On both sides. Sabotage? No, they must have gone bad somehow, maybe yellowed. An android this posh would be more likely to go without some protection than to be seen as a patchwork of dirty parts.

"This is normally when I'd ask if you have a spare set of shoulder plates at home. Unless you'd like to come back here when your coat gets caught again."

"Tried a few styles when they still made compatible ones, didn't much care for the limited movement. Haven't you ever tried to--?" Another pause. "They make certain activities difficult. For me. However, I'd not be against a housecall, if you find some with a decent range of motion."

"A housecall? At whose house?"

"Mine. Well, the landlady's, but it's my flat. Could be yours too, splitting it would make the rent fall well within our means, even with the increase from having to heat it in the winter. I have to run, but an appointment could fit at seven this evening."

"Our--? Who do I bill?"

"The chequing account is listed under Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221 Baker Street." The android grabbed the winter coat from the desk John had put it on, slung it over one shoulder, and ran out the door as if the building had been on fire.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic won't be 100% linear.

John had a habit, as most humans do, of going to sleep at night. Almost every time, he would lock his bedroom door. On the occasion that he didn't, either from forgetfulness or just to mix it up a little (one could never be certain), Sherlock sometimes decided to observe him, since at three in the morning there was usually nothing better to do. Sleep, as a concept, was not particularly interesting. Bioneuroscientists found it mysterious enough, and criminals took advantage of the vulnerability of sleep in a variety of ways, but at its core, it was the least interesting state for a human to be in, lacking the finality of death or the responsiveness of life. However... John Watson appeared to find the activity of sleeping uniquely taxing.

With patience, a lack of breathing, the ability to stay still for an indefinite amount of time, and a slightly embarrassing amount of WD-40, it's possible to get extremely close to even a light sleeper. 

Contrary to popular belief, a human is more likely to get a boxer's fracture from punching another human than from punching an injection-molded assembly of thirty year old plastic. That stereotypical movie scene of punches just glancing off doesn't actually work. Secondly, there are three classical reactions to a threatening stimulus: Fight, Flight, and Freeze.

John Watson, for no discernible reason, decided to open his eyes when the android he lived with happened to be leaning over the bed like some kind of chrome cretin. His reaction was extremely rapid and entirely nonsensical, but could be broken into a series of steps like any other, starting at the pre-awakened state of 43+97+84, eyes closed, general trembling. Due to unknown stimulus, this was followed by 5+M69+0, sudden eye contact without apparent emotional reaction. 

The expected next step would have been 50E, shouting. It was not. For some time, John Watson did absolutely nothing, and Sherlock Holmes watched. The man on the bed stared pointedly, but otherwise stayed as still and silent as he’d been while asleep.

As far as the movies were concerned, James Bond was always able to escape those cliche situations of being tied down near an advancing circular saw or laser beam or something like that. John Watson, at least in his night-terrors, was not so lucky. He couldn’t feel much of anything holding him down, but he still wasn’t able to move.

While most of his nightmares were, above all, loud, this one was absolutely silent. John knew this place, even without the noise. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t hear anything, but maybe that was why he’d been brought here. He was broken, ergo, he had to die. Mostly concealed by shadows, a tall scrapper looked down at him. John was on his back, staring at the man who was going to destroy him. But instead of getting it over with, the man just stared right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The numbers Sherlock uses to describe John's response are codes from the Facial Action Coding System, a real way of encoding any human facial expression, published in 1978. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System
> 
> Originally I was going to name the chapter "Sleep Paralysis Daemon" as a joke, weird puns didn't really match the tone


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a rough day, and Sherlock needs to chill. Baby photos are a bit strange when you were never quite a baby, but everyone makes do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nonlinear, chapters do not have to be read in sequential order.
> 
> In real life, the Perceptron algorithm (see link in end notes) is a specific type of machine learning that is now known to be very limited. Here, I'm unrepentantly stealing it as a name to refer to this universe's earliest non-person-shaped machines that had "awareness" or could "think"

The AGRO office had been Hell. The middle of summer meant that John’s entire, extremely long, workday had been filled with the smell of burnt plastic and the monotony of explaining thermal paste. To top off, the A/C in the flat had been broken since some time the previous night, and Sherlock had displayed no interest in trying to fix it while John was at work.

John opened the fridge to at least get a cold beer, only to find the interior of the fridge occupied by a body. An entire body. Not a collection of sample boxes, but an actual, whole body, still as death and not breathing at all. Naked, of course, and only able to fit inside the fridge by folding into a pose that might have required dislocating something. Yesterday he told Sherlock that any parts taken from a human weren't sanitary to put in there. Apparently the android took that to mean that the fridge was perfectly fine for storing anything at all but human organs, and decided it was a convenient thinking spot.

While John tried to reconcile the naked android in the refrigerator, a faint burning smell drifted from Sherlock. "Close the door, I'm trying to think."

"And you can't do that out here, with some clothes on?" Simulated or not, bare arse was not something that belonged in the fridge, and John needed to draw the line somewhere.

"While wasting processing cycles, yes, but not if I want to get anywhere on this case before midnight while avoiding permanent damage." The android's joints were readjusted to resemble an even less comfortable pose. "Close the door."

As Sherlock briefly leaned to one side during the movement, John saw a discolored shape on the wall of the fridge, staining almost the entire area the android had leaned against. Thermal damage. If Sherlock survived this stunt, John was going to--

Sherlock clumsily grabbed for the door, but John kept it out of reach. The android spoke without bothering to look at John. "If you had a human flatmate, I wonder if you would have left a gun in plain sight instead. You continuously surprise me, but the crude threat last night was disappointing."

"What the Hell are you talking about?" John couldn't remember making any remotely threatening gesture towards the android. "How high of a temperature are you running? What if there'd been a blackout?"

Sherlock suddenly broke from the bizarre pose, turning to lean out of the fridge far enough that John could feel an increasingly dangerous amount of heat radiating off. "There is nothing dangerous about controlled overclocking, _Captain_ , but you of all people know--" the android struggled to string words together as individual processors either silently screamed for cooling or shut themselves down to avoid damage. "Th-the law wasn't written for _my_ sake." 

As if the effort of derision had been the last straw, Sherlock tumbled sideways out of the fridge, and John had enough presence of mind to step back instead of trying to break the fall. It was a lesson everyone learned after working long enough with hot machinery, better to let something sturdy hit the floor than to burn the hell out of your hands trying to catch it.

After using oven mitts to awkwardly drag his now-inert flatmate to the bathtub and filling the basin partway with cold water, John retreated back to the kitchen to try and figure out what had brought this on, and to try and ignore the sizzling from the bathroom. Overclocking was extremely dangerous when done without adequate cooling measures, but honestly, getting in the fridge didn't come close to 'adequate'. John didn't even know if Sherlock had the interior space for a good enough cooling system, but that could at least be answered by finding the android's paperwork.

Another engineer might've just started prying off plates to see for themself what the hell was going on in there, but not John Watson. It was one thing to read someone's medical history-- human or not-- but it was quite another to open up their rib cage for no good reason.

He found what he was looking for in Sherlock's… office? It certainly wasn't a bedroom, without a bed, but the word 'office' didn't exactly fit the mess of photo-laden cork boards, mismatched shelving, stacked cardboard boxes, and general chaos that enveloped the space. On the end of a particularly low shelf-- barely off the ground at all--, propped up by a jar of some kind of algae being used as a bookend, John found Sherlock's history. But not the android's maintenance history.

He'd expected a set of log files, maybe some hopelessly expired warranty information. 

Not a photo album. 

It started with a newspaper article. It hadn't been jaggedly cut out or folded, it was hardly even yellowed. For God's sake, it had even been laminated, before being tucked into the four notches holding it into the photo album page. It was from 1977. The year Sherlock claimed to have been made.

"LOVEBIRDS WIN PERCEPTRON DESIGN COMPETITION, SPLIT £500 PRIZE"

A lump rose in John's throat. There weren't any photos, it was obviously a side story, and the short article focused more on the novelty of the married couple as a team than on what they had created, but he knew. Why the hell else would it be in here? He kept reading, partly out of curiosity and partly out of disbelief.

The next headlines were somewhat enlightening, the dated typefaces and poor quality mimeographing indicated they were only printed in student-written university publications. They mostly read like tabloid stories, and lacked much substance beyond expressing amusement at the young AI's antics, but John managed to glean some details on Sherlock's early years.

"LAST YEAR'S PRIZE-WINNING PERCEPTRON TRASH TALKS THIS YEAR'S COMPETITION"

In less than a year, the slow addition of more processors running in parallel had allowed a jump in speed, from "six minutes per compound sentence" to only three. Startlingly, John realized that it hadn't been speech, at least not at first, but text, through an attached teletype terminal. Taking multiple minutes for text output was horribly slow even for the seventies, but as he-- er, as it-- as… Sherlock had been a student project, the first years must have been spent running on affordable, hobbyist hardware, probably the size of a suitcase, at a treacle speed. The 'trash talking' had been a dig at a rival university's "POOR ATTEMPT AT RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL", but there was no explanation on what that attempt had been.

"'OBSERVATIONAL EFFICIENCY', AMBITIOUS RESEARCH PAPER ON MAXIMIZING DATA THROUGHPUT-- BY A PERCEPTRON" 

The request to gain visual input had initially been rejected, as affordable digital cameras hadn't quite been invented yet, but eventually Sherlock had been granted sporadic access to the output from a set of photocells. The images were black and white, as well as being incredibly low resolution, but the revelation of gaining sight had apparently inspired Sherlock to write a paper on the process of identifying basic shapes. The paper getting published in a few scientific journals apparently led to more resources dedicated to Sherlock's calculations, at least for a time. There was no mention of what name the paper was published under, but it didn't outright state that the paper was anonymous either.

"CHILDISH? 5 YEAR OLD PERCEPTRON ARGUES AGAINST NIGHTLY SHUTDOWN, THOSE PAYING ELECTRIC BILL UNMOVED BY TESTIMONY"

The first inkling that things were going to go south. 1982, at least if the headline got the age correct, meant that 'true' androids were just around the corner, and that the first generation of them were about to blow the university's once-impressive perceptron out of the water. Suddenly, the realization struck John in the gut. Sherlock hadn’t trusted people not to dismantle him during the night. John thought about the hot, loud scrapping warehouse in Chile, and decided he wouldn't have trusted anyone either. The fact that Sherlock wouldn't have been able to stop anyone, had completely lacked the ability to move, to even see anyone coming, must have been terrifying.

"'NOT GOING ANYWHERE', CLAIMS DECADE-OLD PERCEPTRON"

1987, then. John wondered, briefly, how much fear that university managed to squeeze out of a bookcase-sized, decade-old mainframe with a blinking cursor. According to the article, Sherlock's processing throughput was still equivalent to more than two first-generation androids, but the aging perceptron's running cost was equivalent to running almost ten first-generation androids. The article had an air of confusion, and the writer, some programming student minoring in journalism, seemed uncomfortable with the moral dilemma.

A more professionally printed clipping had been slotted into the bottom of the album's page.

"The perceptron is no longer available for unsupervised student use. Please contact the head of student resources for information regarding necessary access to controlled material. Bans from access are non-negotiable, and extend to those found to knowingly assist prohibited persons in accessing the materials."

The rest of the album was almost all empty frames, save for a Polaroid, marked "Brisbane ‘88", in spiky handwriting.

It showed a crowd of people at the 1988 technology exposition in Australia, no two looking in the same direction. The background was filled with tents and banners, various national flags and company logos, and signs directing the crowd towards showcase pavilions. Far in the back, a man was looking directly at the camera. He was in a hideous orange dress shirt with long sleeves, making him stand out slightly from the more lightly dressed crowd. In the photo, he stared blankly at either the camera or whoever was using it, his head tilted slightly bird-like sort of way, as if it was abnormal for someone to snap pictures at a convention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron
> 
> For the longest time, "Simulated or not, bare arse was not something that belonged in the fridge." was the only line I had. That was my starting point for the entire fic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From this point forward this will be treated as a series of short fics set in the same AU.

> There's an old joke about engineers and doctors, old enough that its premise isn't completely true any more, but it stuck around along with the ones about airline food and horses in pubs. It goes like this: What's the difference between a heart surgeon and an auto mechanic? The surgeon has to work while the engine is still running. 
> 
> Maybe it would have been funnier with the setup, where the two of them were arguing about pay or something. Maybe it's just a dumb joke. Maybe there should be a new joke: What's an android have in common with a cab? Both can drive you to drink.

John closed the lid of his laptop, after deciding not to post the draft. He'd given up on using a password after repeatedly finding the antivirus altering him to intercepted data, though he wasn't unused to a lack of digital privacy after Chile. The photo album had been a curve ball, true, but not necessarily a sinister one. 

Remembering that the fridge was void of beer, John left for the pub. Aside from a drink, he needed some air, literally, as the thermometer from his open toolkit had showed the flat's temperature as 30C.

He considered leaving a note for Sherlock, but decided it wouldn't be well-received, especially after that weird break with reality the android had gone through. The note would either seem patronizing or like an invitation to go after him with a lead pipe.

And besides, Sherlock would probably take a few more hours to reboot.  
\--  
Quick Crash Recovery initialized.  
Failed with Error 14: Hardware Mismatch  
Aborting Quick Crash Recovery...  
Done.

Rebooting in Safe Mode…  
Force-Closed

Connecting to Just-In-Time Wireless Support…  
Force-Closed

Rebooting normally…  
\--  
It was not, in Sherlock's opinion, "clumsy" to slip while trying to exit the bathtub. It was perfectly normal. One of the few times it would have been nice to have some traction, really, such as skin. Or maybe just a pair of those athletic socks with the rubberized pattern on the sole... but then again, socks would have caused additional heat retention... theorizing without data was useless, and experimentation in insulation-traction ratios could wait until after the case.

It was unclear how much time had passed between losing awareness and regaining it. In the past, so-called "safe mode" would have provided a stopwatch function, but it wasn't worth the indignity, and limiting use of certain processors to "protect" them was detrimental to pulling oneself up by the bootstrapper and solving (or ignoring) whatever caused the error in the first place.

In this particular case, even a toaster would have known the issue was insufficient cooling, though John might argue it was the "risk" of overclocking in the first place. Yet the man somehow finds nothing wrong with caffeine, and hardly means to outlaw that on a similar basis. 

Hypocrisy aside, it was... decent of him to run the tap. If nothing else, it didn't mesh with the open hostility of--

The android stilled mid-thought with one hand on the doorknob.

Open hostility. Open. On display. Trying to point something out?

Pieces of John Watson's behavior clicked together in parallel with those of the murderer.   
-  
The crime scene at the latex plant had been noticeably distressing to John, though he'd hid it well enough. Four human victims, each found with a sheet of solidified rubber affixed over the face like a death mask. The first three had been admirable captures of each victim's likeness, lacking not even the minutest detail. The fourth one had shown a significant shift in the pattern, the latex had been applied in several layers to obscure large cracks, and the final image had been severely distorted. The distortions mainly centered around the mouth and nose, but also included the faint imprint of a work glove pressing downward at the edges. 

Victims 1 through 3 must have been killed before receiving their masks, but number 4 had been an attempt to capture the moment of death itself. Why? Overt disrespect towards suffering. It hadn't been one of the factory workers, of course not, it had been the owner of the competing plant across the street-- though he would have hired someone else to do it if he'd had a penny to his name. When all else failed, connection with a gruesome murder was the only option left to put the dangerously successful competitor out of business. All that was missing was a chemical analysis of the masks, and a comparison with the last batch of rubber from before the mixing floor was declared a crime scene, and a sample from the competing brand.   
-  
No. Open, but not threatening. How could John be hostile without an intent to threaten? Or was it a threat, without the intent to act in hostility?

Trying to reconcile interpersonal relationships after a long period of isolation? No, he got on well enough with anyone outside the AGRO, but didn't seem to trust anyone at the office as far as he could throw them, and took his toolcase to and from work like a freelancer. The toolcase was what had started this mess, after all. What kind of man was protective enough to take it home, but irreverent enough to leave it not only unlocked, but open, with a degassing magnet front and center? Ridiculous. 

Might as well have been a loaded handgun, it meant the same thing. Except in the eyes of the law. So, a taunt. An overt example of something he could hold over not just his flatmate, but anyone with so much as an artificial hip. But it had been unused since Chile, and he didn't even carry it other than to and from work.

Dissatisfied with the lack of answers, Sherlock went about examining the AC.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock had been right, there was very little family resemblance, since one of them was an android, and the other was, apparently, the entire sixth floor of a nondescript office building.

John looked between the two brothers, one of them practically vibrating with discomfort, the other completely unreadable. Sherlock had been right, there was very little family resemblance, since one of them was an android, and the other was, apparently, the entire sixth floor of a nondescript office building.

Server racks were arranged for optimal storage capacity, making up a wall of blinking lights that wrapped the perimeter of the room (obscuring all the windows) before doubling back to fill in the center floor space with rows. The air was dry and cold, the ceiling lights were off, and the only sound, aside from the pair's footsteps, was the variable hum of electricity. John's only sense of direction and scale came from the elevator door at his back, and the regular interval of support beams holding up the floors above. 

The space looked exactly like any online corporation's web hosting setup, just without the semi-ironic 'hang in there' poster and the water cooler. John almost wanted to laugh. It was impressive, simply for the sense of scale, but no more eerie than the site of an overnight repair shift.

Sherlock stilled, looked at an incredibly specific speck on the ceiling, and scowled. "Say it out loud if you want John to hear it, I'm not one of your minions."

Almost instantaneously, John's mobile went off. It was a text.

> YOU DON'T SEEM INTIMIDATED.

"That's funny," John replied breezily, looking up at the constellation of mini-cameras embedded in the drop-ceiling. He had a pretty good idea of what brand they were, and why they were there. "Because you seem terrified." The amount of security was simply unreasonable for a minor government processing array. Paranoia, clear as day.

No one, absolutely no one, under any circumstance nor by any means, was ever going to sneak up on the Perceptron called Mycroft Holmes. While Sherlock had escaped the threat of obseletion quite literally _on foot_ , carefully avoiding any further dependence on humans, Mycroft had done the opposite, working for the enemy to the point of becoming indispensable. By bearing the entire weight of image processing for the nation's 52,000 government-owned CCTV cameras. 

Attempting to remove the Perceptron would mean severely crippling national security until a new system could be developed. In essence, Mycroft had carefully, quietly, and very, very deliberately become one of those artifacts that you'd try not to think about or question the age of, like those eight-inch-floppy-disks in America that control enough nuclear payload to destroy the planet. The rub, however, was that the only people trying not to think about Mycroft were those that knew how the security network was run, and the only people who knew _that_ were the ones employed within it. 

John had very quickly declined the offer to assist in surveillance, and with it, knowingly or not, the chance to find out just how deep that particular rabbithole went.  
\--  
It was clear that Sherlock had wanted no part of any deal. "Mycroft," the android spat, as soon as the flat's door was locked, "is the most inefficient collection of parts in the country. Instead of bothering to optimize, that bloated abomination brute forces anything necessary. That level of excess is enabled only by constant entanglement with the government, by which I mean practically taking over, just to indulge in spying--"

"To watch his own back. He's paranoid."

The android very rarely acknowledged interruption, but stopped to look at John. John looked back at Sherlock. The mistake registered just a second too late. John blanched. Shit. _Shit_. Of all the worst ways to slip. John waited for something to explode. He didn't expect Sherlock's reaction of... wonder.

"To err is human, then?" The question was neither sarcastic nor angry. "I suppose it's no more outrageous than using 'the presence of independent desire' as a crude gauge of awareness, but why that?" John made to answer, but Sherlock paid no attention and turned around, beginning to pace, trying to unravel John Watson. "No, not just flaws... self preservation! That's the key, isn't it? Not just to stay alive-- or existent-- but to preserve deviations? Something to do with brokenness? Interdependence?" The android knew the answer was close, that there was something just over the horizon, but there was something, some detail just out of reach. "Spite? Stubbornness?"

"To try and survive as an individual, despite outliving your intended purpose." God, it sounded rehearsed, even if he'd never said it out loud before.

Sherlock stopped dead on the other side of the living room, facing away from John. "Have I outlived my purpose?" 

The question, hanging unanswered, forced the android to turn around. The evening light from the window cast strange shadows on Sherlock's form, the setting sun's glow reflecting dully against the plastic. There was nothing human to see. Nothing even close. 

John heart was working doubletime, between the murmur of apprehension at inciting a possibly violent reaction, and the roar of fear at the possibility of saying something... genuinely hurtful to his friend. "You never told me what it was. Why they made you, I mean. In the beginning."


	6. Chapter 6

John wasn't sure whether to be impressed, bewildered, touched, threatened, or offended. He settled on bewildered, but it was a near thing.

"Sherlock, where did these even come from?" The fact that it was a sealed, prescription-only medication, and unexpired, crossed out several possible answers. For someone without the ability to use them, Sherlock had an unnerving familiarity with drugs. 

"Florida, according to the online seller, but the amount of damage to the taped end of the outer packaging indicates it went through multiple rounds of border security, while the unmolested contents discount any port with draconian anti-drug laws. Probably manufactured in Australia, then, or possibly--"

"Right, okay, the whole 'on the internet, nobody knows you're not an addict', thing. Got it. My next question is 'Why'."

"You agreed to it."

"What? Was I actually here, or did you announce a project to the walls and take silence as agreement?"

"You told me that if it were possible, you'd allow a diagnostic shutdown of yourself, and that I was the one you would trust to perform it. It was obviously a rhetorical attempt to express your discomfort with both my refusal to be fully examined and your moral framework preventing you from forcing the issue, but there is an opportunity here." Sherlock picked the pill bottle back up off the table. "While you obviously do sleep, like any human, we both know that that's not the same level of vulnerability. This is." 

The chances of John agreeing had been calculated at about 60%. The chances of him agreeing without any attempt at negotiation on terms or safety had been considerably smaller, but it still hadn't been completely unexpected. Probably trying to be a good example.

45 minutes later, with John inert on the kitchen table, Sherlock removed a sheet from the logbook in John's toolbox, and began filling it out in pen. 

Device: John Watson  
Manufacturer: parents  
Distributor: N/A  
Operating System: unknown  
Known Faults: debatable

Date of last crash: 10 to 15 minutes ago  
Cause of last crash: deliberate

Description of bug: N/A  
Steps to reproduce: N/A  
Expected Behaviour: N/A  
Additional Context: N/A

Most of the remaining diagnostic criteria on the sheet weren't worth testing, partly because Sherlock wasn't about to start cutting holes in someone vulnerable to stab wounds, just to get a look at the internal organs. That's what corpses were for. 

Instead, the android started taking measurements. It was fascinating how much more joint mobility there was in a living specimen. Within the first half-hour, there was a chart of circumferences, lengths, and angular maximums. The list of measurements had filled the back of the page, but by the end of the first hour, there was still no physically measurable anomaly. Not even a minor asymmetry. John wasn't broken, he wasn't even fractured, nor dented, rusted, misaligned, cracked-- well, that one was debatable-- but there was nothing physical to fix. 

Briefly, Sherlock felt like an idiot. Of course there hadn't been anything to fix. It was a trust exercise, nothing more. John hadn't really expected him to know what was wrong. John had devoted his college years to the study of robotics, and his understanding of mechanical engineering was bolstered by years of intensive army work. John's point, his job, was to understand machines. 

And yet he was the one unconscious on the table. Because he thought it would make Sherlock more comfortable with accepting a necessary procedure. The implications were... heady, but could be considered later. 

The second hour was spent in a way that might have later been described as as 'fooling around with every single tool except one', though to escape the euphemism it was instead worded as 'keeping an eye out for John's respiration while inventorying the toolbox.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the patience and encouragement. This project has been a learning experience from start to finish.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Bad Sneakers" by Steely Dan.
> 
> AGRO stands for "Android/Gynoid Repairs On-site", like a walk-in clinic for robots.
> 
> Some speculate that there are going to be massive wars over the lithium supply in the future, much like oil. The "Lithium Triangle" is a region of salt flats in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, possibly containing more than half the planet's supply of Lithium.
> 
> Servo is short for servomotor, used in current robotics as small electronic muscles.


End file.
